This thesis focuses on many representations of the child conveyed by all the speeches on international adoption practices and surrogacy methods. Through an analysis of the government, legal and media discourses, we will demonstrate how these two practices redefine the parenthood even though they are at the crossroad of biology and society. Even if international adoption and surrogacy assume to be two different worlds, a priori, they both suggest, at the end, the desire for children. Parenthood as proposed by these two ways of “making family” involves an emotional side where humans feel torn between the importance of parenthood in the society and the influence of genetic. The human science literature is abundant about the way social actors like intended parents and third parties (gamete donors, surrogate mothers and intermediaries) see these practices, but limited research has been done on the social, symbolic and economic representations of adopted children and those who are born through surrogacy. Thus, whether it be question of “abandoned children” within the framework of the international adoption or “manufactured children” in the context of surrogacy, it is clear that children are selected according to a range of cultural and biological criteria combined to what we value as “a family”. This thesis will show that all the discourses on these two different ways of parenthood suggest visions of the family and also of the child. It will explain that these views form part of a biological logic of parenting which reproduce a normative understanding of the family based on identity genetic logics.